“There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter.” (paragraph 6)
“... even if the Christian message has known periods of darkness and ecclesial weakness, it will never grow old. Jesus can … break through the dull categories with which we would enclose him and he constantly amazes us by his divine creativity.” (paragraph 11)
“The apostles never forgot the moment when Jesus touched their hearts... Together with Jesus, this remembrance makes present to us 'a great cloud of witnesses' (Heb. 12:1), some of whom, as believers, we recall with great joy.... The believer is essentially 'one who remembers.'” (paragraph 13)
“An evangelizing community gets involved by word and deed in people's daily lives; it bridges distances, it is willing to abase itself if necessary, and it embraces human life, touching the suffering flesh of Christ in others.” (paragraph 24)
“Evangelization consists mostly of patience and disregard for constraints of time.... It cares for the grain and does not grow impatient at the weeds.” (paragraph 24)
“[the Christian as Evangelist] finds a way to let the word take flesh in a particular situation and bear fruits of new life, however imperfect or incomplete these may appear.” (paragraph 24)
"Patience and disregard for constraints of time..." That struck home. I consider some of the men of the community whom I have tried to help; I described them in a previous essay. I often resent how much time they take -- one of them, R., comes by every Wednesday after the free breakfast and talks. He can chew up an hour very easily. But he amazed me a couple of weeks ago; one of the other street guys has bad feet (I'm guessing he is a poorly-managed diabetic) and was in an especially bad way. R. took him into his own home, such as it is (a room at the cheapest flophouse motel in town), to soak his feet in epsom salts, which I helped him buy, and let him "take a load off his feet" for a day or two. If that isn't "bearing fruits of new life," I don't know what is.
In yesterday's post I linked to a newspaper account that emphasized the social justice aspects of the Pope's exhortation; I soon found that Francis himself gave an outline of the document at the end of the introduction (paragraph 17). I added it to yesterday's post, and will repeat it here:
I have decided, among other themes, to discuss at length the following questions:
(a) the reform of the Church in her missionary outreach;
(b) the temptations faced by pastoral workers;
(c) the Church, understood as the entire People of God which evangelizes;
(d) the homily and its preparation;
(e) the inclusion of the poor in society;
(f) peace and dialogue within society;
(g) the spiritual motivations for mission.
I have dealt extensively with these topics, with a detail that some may find excessive...
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